Category: Blogging

One of the fastest ways to build authority for your brand is by writing a book.

A book gives you instant credibility in the business world. A book can be used in many ways, including: print, a PDF (Portable Document Format), or as a Kindle book.

You can use the book to make money but a better approach is to create the book for the Kindle format, create multiple calls to action within the text and give your book away for free.

This allows you to use your book as a lead generator to help you build your list, which should be your number one objective. Once you have a list of hungry customers who like and trust you, you can sell to them over and over again for years to come.

Millionaire author Gerry Robert created a book and used it as a lead generator. When I found it some years ago it was in a free PDF which I downloaded. I later discovered it was also available as a print version which you could buy, too.

One of the most important business building strategies is to create a list. The reason why is simple. With a list you can sell your products and services to the same clients, over and over again.

According to a Maria Veloso, author of “Web Copy That Sells” if you don’t add clients to a list after a sale you are leaving 90%+ of the potential income you can earn over the lifetime of that client on the table.

The way to entice users to sign up for your list is to give them a valuable and free offering, such as a multi-part email course, a free report or video about your service, or even a coupon.

There are several ways of setting up your blog to collect email addresses. One option is to use a “squeeze page,” where potential customers are directed before they can enter your site. Continue reading

Here is one additional tool I use to identify publicity opportunities and it, also, is FREE!

I’m talking about Google Alerts. Setting up alerts that not only let you know (via email) when you and your business are being talked about, but all these other alerts:

Alerts on:

The topic of your business (business travel, in my case)

Conferences and trade shows in your topic area (“conference social media” and “tradeshow social media” for example)

Experts in your topic area (“Mari Smith social media” for example)

Speaking opportunities (“call for speakers social media” for example)

Statistics in your topic area (“statistics social media” for example)

The magazines/media in your topic area (“Inc. magazine” “social media” for example)

Your name

Your business name

And other areas that you want to keep apprised of in your niche.

Can you see how being alerted with this information could help you apply for speaking opportunities, write an article that can be submitted to a magazine, be a guest blogger on another site and come up with topic ideas for your business? All at no monetary cost, just a bit of your time.

How do you get started? Go to https://www.google.com/alerts, sign into your Google account and start creating alerts. You can have as many as will be valuable to you. Have too many and it may be overwhelming to keep up with!

Emails will begin to flow into your mailbox. I recommend forwarding them automatically to a subfolder so you can review several at a time and have them all in one place.

Google Alerts have been invaluable for me. So set some up today (or add to your existing Google Alert list) and your business will be expanding all over the place!

Have you noticed the amount of images that have exploded into the social media scene?

It’s no mistake that these images have taken over our favourite social media platforms.

With the advent of smart phones that have some super high quality lenses, the ability for us to take great quality photos in an instant has arrived.

It is believed that 95% of us have a smart phone within arms reach of us most of our waking day. Its no wonder that the amount of image uploads has grown rapidly.

This growth has also sparked a proliferation of photo sharing sites and apps that continue to dominate the news. Not only are there new sites popping up everywhere, even old sites that had no intention of using images at its core have succumbed. Think Twitter and LinkedIn.

As these sites grow and our tastes adapt, there is also a need to produce more engaging images. Images that are getting the most eyeballs, the most shares and the most engagement are sophisticated, chic and relevant to the mood of the day. How can somebody with no graphic skills or a creative bone in their body even compete?

Well, thanks to this obsession with images, there are also a growing number of photo editing apps and sites that make even a novice look like a pro in no time.

There are a few rules that you need to follow if you decide to start creating some graphical masterpieces to get them amongst your network.

First and foremost are they engaging? Do people want to share them and are they happy to add their name to the list of people who have shared it?

Secondly, do they fit with your own branding or the relevancy of your message? Is the image you are creating relevant to your target market?

And Thirdly, can the image be linked back to your business in some way? Have you created the image with a connection back to your business, in the case that it gets shared outside of your own network?

Just following these 3 steps can save you a lot of wasted time and frustration in your Endeavour to create the perfect image and keep up with your competition.

In this presentation, I will go over the reasons behind the image explosion and then walk through some of the great tools that are out there for small business owners and entrepreneurs. I will also dig into what makes an shareable and engaging so that you can begin to create the right type of image for your business.